The present invention relates to a chip collector for collecting chips produced during cutting operation, and a face milling cutter used with such a chip collector.
Chip collectors of this type are disclosed e.g. in Unexamined Japanese Utility Model Publications 2-104915, 2-107452 and 2-145944.
These chip collectors have a cylindrical casing surrounding a face milling cutter and having a suction port formed in the casing. Chips produced in the casing by the cutter are sucked out through the suction port.
In some conventional arrangements, air is blown out of the face milling cutter to improve the flow of chips (Unexamined Japanese Utility Model Publications 4-115517 and 4-115518).
Any of these conventional chip collectors has a one-piece casing. Thus, it was impossible to clean or inspect the interior of the casing or replace throwaway inserts mounted on the cutter without removing the face milling cutter from the spindle of a machine tool. Also, the casing tends to be a major obstacle when attaching and detaching the face milling cutter. Thus, conventional chip collectors have many maintenance-related problems.
Moreover, since round suction ports are formed at a right angle to the casing, it is difficult to discharge chips smoothly. In order to improve the chip-discharging capacity, other conventional devices are provided with a chip-collecting space and a guide member for guiding chips into the chip-collecting space. In this arrangement, after introducing chips into the collecting space, they are collected by sucking them. Another conventional device is further provided with a means for blowing air to discharge chips. In spite of these prior efforts, it was still difficult to discharge chips sufficiently smoothly.
Thus, in order to collect chips with high efficiency, a powerful dust collector was needed.
Now therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a chip collecting device which is easy to maintain and which allows replacement of throwaway inserts without detaching it from the machine tool and which can discharge chips smoothly without requiring a large suction force.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a face milling cutter which is to be used with the chip collector of the present invention to collect chips with high efficiency.